


The Gods Must Be Crazy

by Redrikki



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Cultural References, Gen, Post-Chosen, References to Underage Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 12:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The newly empowered Slayers are like a thousand Coke bottles in the desert.  Xander goes looking for one among the Bushmen of Botswana.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Bushmen are a real ethnic group known by many names including San, Basarwa and Kung. Since Bushmen is the term they consider least offensive and I consider most pronounceable, that’s the one I went with. Their language is called !Kung and it is click language. All the strange punctuation and symbols in the middle of words represent specific clicks. Don’t ask me to pronounce them. The plight of the Bushmen in Botswana is as accurate as I can make it.

[Transcript of Watcher Council interview with Watcher Alexander “Xander” Harris recorded March 10, 2007]

IN: So, let's talk about your first official assignment.

XH: _The Gods Must Be Crazy_. You’ve seen it right?

IN: Is that the one where a suitcase falls out of a plane?

XH: No, that’s _Luggage of the Gods_. This is the one where this Coke bottle falls from this airplane into the Kalahari and gets found by these Bushmen. At first they think it’s all cool and useful. It’s a masher, it’s a musical instrument, it slices, it dices, and also makes Julienne fries. But it turns out to be nothing but trouble and the main character has to go on all these wacky adventure to make the gods take the damn thing back.

IN: Er [Pause] Is this entirely relevant?

XH: Oh, it’s totally relevant. See, all these new Slayers? At first, they were all cool and useful with the world save-age, but turns out there were a lot more Potentials than just our thirty. Giles didn’t know about them, the Council didn’t know about them, heck, even the First dropped the ball on the killing them front. So, suddenly there’s who knows how many girls with superpowers out there. Their families don’t know what to do with them, they don’t know what to do with themselves, and it’s not like we really had a plan. They’re just a thousand Coke bottles in the desert.

IN: I meant to the story. 

XH: Oh, the story? You mean you wanted an actual story and not just some rambling pop culture reference?

IN: Yes, please. That is rather the point of this little exercise. 

XH: [Laughs] Okay, okay. Xander Harris, international man of mystery coming up. Hmmm, where to start? I guess Gabarone’s as good a place as any. 

IN: That’s the capital, correct?

XH: Yeah, it’s the capital. I was expecting it to be like one of those please-give-us-money commercials. You know, mud huts, starving kids, but Gabarone’s like an actual city with a university and suburbs where everyone has servants and speaks English and stuff.

IN: And that was where you met your Slayer?

XH: Wha? Naw, the seers said the Slayer was a Bushman. Bushwoman. Bushperson? Anyway, Gabarone’s just where the airport is. Plus, it’s where I hooked up with Xi.

IN: Watcher Mogetse?

XH: Well, now, yeah, but it didn’t start off like that. Back then he was just a Bushman ecology student playing native guide slash translator-guy to tourists and junior Watchers like me when he needed the money. Giles’ contact at the university set us up. We met at this street café, did the whole getting-to-know-you thing, and really hit it off in a potential-guy-friend-who-isn’t-just-dating-one-of-my-girl-friends sort of way. So, when he asked what I wanted to get out of the trip I was, you know, torn. On the one hand, I liked the guy and starting off a friendship with a lie just isn’t cool. On the other hand, I liked the guy and being all hey, vampires are real and I’m looking for a girl who slays them probably wouldn’t have gone over well.

IN: So what did you say?

XH: Said I was looking for a legend. True, yet cryptic. [Pause] Of course, it turned out to be the wrong thing to say.

IN: How so?

XH: Lead to some Olympic-sized conclusion jumping. Xi decided I was an anthropologist and started going on about this one that lived with his family when he was a kid and how the guy was like the coolest person ever, encouraged Xi to get all educated, still sent everyone birthday presents and everything. It made the whole not-an-anthropologist thing kinda awkward to explain. 

IN: But you did explain, correct?

XH: In a way that made no mention of vampires or girls who slay them, yeah. And then we made with the planning and the packing and hit the road to Kaudwane.

IN: Kaud-wah?

XH: Kaudwane. It’s one of the two resettlement camps.

IN: Resettlement camps? [Pause] God Lord, I sound like a parrot.

XH: [Laughs] Yar! Goes with me pirate look it does. [Pause] [Coughs] But, ah, yeah, sorry. Resettlement camps. Back in the 90s, Botswana decided to, ah, civilize all the Bushmen, Bushpeople, so they passed all these laws against hunting in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, rounded everyone up and dumped them in these camps with free housing and food and schools and stuff.

IN: Sounds pretty good.

XH: Well, yeah, except for the whole overcrowding-TB-death-of-their-culture thing.

IN: Yes, er, rather. [Pause] So, Kaudwane. 

XH: So, remember how I thought Gabarone would be like a Christian Children’s Fund commercial? Well, Kaudwane really was like that. It had the crappy little concrete houses with corrugated iron roofs, barefoot little kids and zero plumbing. We stayed with Xi’s parents. It was [Pause] awkward. 

IN: Because you’re an American?

XH: What? No. They were really cool about it. They had a lot of questions, but they weren’t, like, French or anything. Naw, it was mostly [Pause] you know that thing, were you can never go home again? Turns out it’s true even if home isn’t a giant crater. They just, [Pause] Xi was going to college and his father was raising fleas for dye. You could tell they loved each other; they just didn’t get each other any more. It was pretty painful to watch, like flashbacks to the year after highschool without the evil military cyborg. 

IN: Evil cy–[Deep breath] You know what? Never mind. So Kaudwane is where you met the Slayer?

XH: No, Kaudwane is where I met Xi’s family and a bunch of old people with healing dances and stories about the zany adventures of the creator god and his wives. 

IN: What?

XH: [Sigh] I told Xi I was looking for a legend, right? So he took me to people who knew them. It was actually pretty neat the first couple of times, but after a while? !Kung is like listening to a bowl of Rice Krispies, but I can still recognized the start of the creation myth. 

IN: So, it was these stories that lead you to your Slayer?

XH: Well, kind of, not really, no. 

IN: Then why are you telling me about them?

XH: I’m trying to set the mood I guess. [Pause] Look, sometimes finding a Slayer is as easy as [Pause] Actually, pie is kind of tricky to make. Eating pie, maybe? Sometimes, finding a Slayer is as easy as eating pie, but sometimes it’s weeks in places with crappy sanitation listening to old people stories. Besides, they led to the lead that led to the breakthrough that led to her. 

IN: Do you mind skipping ahead to that then? There’s only so much space on the tape.


	2. Chapter 2

XH: Ah, okay. So fast-forwarding two weeks and a hundred or so stories to New Xade.

IN: New Xade?

XH: The other resettlement camp. You remember how I said Kaudwane was bad? New Xade is actually worse. We’re talking literal crap in the streets, Sunnydale-high murder rates and the smell, well, let’s just say it really put the hell back in hell-hole. So, it’s the fifth day there and we’re listening to this old woman go on and on about how death first came into the world while her granddaughter plays with some rocks in the corner. It must have been the fifth or sixth time I’d heard it, I hadn’t showered for a week, and I just sort of snapped and asked if she knew any stories that were more, ya know, recent. 

IN: Did she?

XH: Actually, she just glared at me like I was the rudest person on the planet. It was the little girl who told me about how the word on the street was some //gauwasi had killed this girl, !Nai.

IN: Some what? How can you even pronounce that?

XH: [Laughs] With lots and lots of practice. //Gauwasi are essentially the evil undead.

IN: Ah. Like vampires.

XH: Or malevolent spirits, yeah. It’s a pretty broad term for any dead thing trying to kill you.

IN: Really? Fascinating. [Coughs] So, I assume you looked into this.

XH: Please. Xi and the old lady were all “It’s TB,” but seven years on the hellmouth? I know a vampire kill when I hear about it. And it made sense that they’d be there. Lots of people who can’t go anywhere and lots of deaths no one bothers to investigate is pretty much a vampire all-you-can-eat buffet. TB might not be gangs on PCP, but it still has that ring to it. 

IN: Ring to it?

XH: You know. Vampires? What vampires? I just fell on the barbeque fork I don’t own. [Snorts] I always thought the whole Sunnydale head-in-the-sand thing was unique, but it turns out denial is a river that runs everywhere. 

IN: And you confirmed you suspicions?

XH: Of course. So, our girl !Nai was, ah, [Pause] sometimes in the camps, girls without families turn to, ah [Pause]

IN: Young Nai was a woman of negotiable affection. Is that what you’re saying?

XH: Yeah. The old woman had this attitude like the kid had it coming, but we managed to get directions to where !Nai lived with some other, ah, negotiably affectionate girls. We get there and they’ve got her laid out on the floor all cleaned up and in her Sunday best. And, well, you’ve seen bodies. 

IN: Er, actually, no.

XH: Seriously?

IN: I work on the oral history project, not in the field.

XH: Right. Sorry. Assumptions and asses all around. [Pause] I saw a lot of bodies back in Sunnydale. Got kind of use to it. I mean, it wasn’t like oh, death, yawn, but you didn’t even have to be a Scooby to get your weekly dose of dead-guy. [Snorts] I’ve been half-way around the world and I’m still surprised when I meet people who never found their teacher’s headless corpse in the cafeteria fridge. 

IN: You mean to say you actually [Pause] No, I don’t even want to think about that. Story.

XH: Story. So, I did the Watcher thing; checked the neck for bites, asked about blood in the mouth, arranged to sit the night with her and then I noticed Xi was staring at me like I was some sicko who just paid a bunch of teenage prostitutes to have some quality time with their dead friend. Which, technically, I had, but still.

IN: It had to be difficult for you.

XH: Yeah. We’d really clicked, but Xi knew I was keeping something from him. If there’s one thing that years of Scooying has taught me aside from cleaning blood out of shirts it’s that secrets and lies? Not good for relationships. 

IN: But sometimes a necessary evil in our line of work. 

XH: Sometimes. And sometimes a stupid, selfish rebar-through-the-gut waiting to happen. [Pause] Sorry. [Pause] So, !Nai’s roomies disappeared like I paid them too, Xi decided corpse-sitting is as freaky and disturbing as it sounds and took a powder and I [Pause]

IN: You?

XH: I have this tradition. Well, it wasn’t a tradition back then since it was my first super-Slayer talent search, but I like to make my girls something special, you know? Local wood, a little artwork on the handle. They’re not exactly Mr. Pointy, but every Slayer should have one nice stake.

IN: That sounds, [Pause] that sounds lovely.

XH: Thanks. I was doing this one out of acacia which is nice and hard and actually smells really good when you cut it. I had the point, a lion motif for the handle and was debating working on the grip or waiting to see how big her hand was when Xi stumbled in.

IN: Stumbled?

XH: He’d had a few, was kind of drunk and pretty pissed. 

IN: Isn’t that a tad redundant?

XH: Hu? [Pause] Oh, no. I meant American-pissed not Brit-pissed. You know, pissed off? Really angry?

IN: Ah. I see. So what was he angry about?

XH: The whole situation, I guess. Me, the job, being stuck in New Xade listening to boring, repetitive stories instead of being back in Gabarone with indoor pluming. He was sort of drunk-pacing, waving his arms and ranting about how he’d tried so hard to get out of the whole camp life, rise above it, and here I was dragging him back into the worst of it. Then he got down on his knees and in my face and asked me what I wanted. “What do you want, Xander,” he said. “What are you looking for? The stories are crap, boring, ignorant crap, and you don’t even take notes. What are you doing here?”

IN: Sounds intense.

XH: He was even yelling by the end. He’d never struck me as a quiet, simmering repressed rage sort of guy, but I guess it had been sort of building and the creepy corpse-sitting was the last straw. 

IN: Building?

XH: The week with his folks wasn’t exactly a Harris family Christmas, but it wasn’t hugs and puppies either. Like I said, it was awkward and painful, with the added bonus of a witness. And with the stories, well, Xi was man-of-science, Joe-college local-boy making good and I’d just spent the last two weeks shoving his face in all the crap he hated about his culture. No one handles that well. 

IN: No, I suppose not. Of course, a room with a potential vampire really isn’t an idea place to air one’s issues. How did you handle it?

XH: I got insanely lucky. [Pause] !Nai woke up. 

IN: Clearly you and I have very different definitions of luck. 

XH: [Laughs] Yeah, well , it saved time on the whole why-yes-Virginia-there-are-vampires speech. One second Xi’s yelling at me and the next second !Nai’s got him in a headlock and going for his throat. 

IN: What happened? What did you do?

XH: I got up and kicked her in the face. So, she tossed Xi aside and was all “Grrrr, arrrg.. Snap, crackle, pop! Grrrr.” And then there was, you know, violence with the kicking and punching and the [Pause] Honestly? It was the most anticlimactic fight of my life. She just short of charged and impaled herself on my stake.

IN: You sound so disappointed. I would think most people would be thrilled to avoid a prolonged fight.

XH: No, hey, I like not getting my ass kicked as much as the next guy. It’s just not the stuff of gripping oral histories. [Pause] Xi thought it was cool though. Well, not cool so much as traumatizing, but it definitely made an impression. 

IN: Oh, dear. How did he take it?

XH: Oh, there was some jibbering and pointing and oh-my-god-ing, but he didn’t faint or run screaming into the night or anything. So, I guess, in retrospect, he handled it pretty well.

IN: But only in retrospect?

XH: Well, when you’re trying to get out of Dodge any handling that isn’t “Well that explains a lot” is pretty damn inconvenient. 

IN: [Laughs] Does anyone ever react that way? Why the hurry? You had neutralize the threat after all.

XH: Hence the high-tailing. A stranger asks to corpse-sit and then the body goes poof? We’re pretty much talking your classic grab-your-torch-and-pitchfork scenario. So, we grabbed our stuff from the hostel, loaded the jeep and hit the road.

IN: Where did you go?

XH: Well, New Xade is about 60 miles to the nearest flush toilet and you can’t exactly hop on the interstate. I wasn’t thinking of any place specific so much as away. So there we are, dead of night, when Xi turned to me smack in the middle of nowhere and asked me what the hell was going on. 

IN: So you told him.

XH: Yup, everything. Vampires, Slayers, Watchers; you name it, I told it. 

IN: And how did he take that?

XH: Well, he’d had a chance to sober up and once you’ve seen an actual vampire super-powered people who hunt them are a lot easier to swallow. And [Pause]

IN: And?

XH: And he really wanted to help. I mean, he’s a Watcher now so you probably figured that out, but at the time it was really [Pause] Well, most of the time when people find out about the whole slaying gig it’s more “get away from me, you freak” or “okay, you have fun with that, I’ll just be over here hiding under this table” and less “hey, sign me up for some of that terrifying, gut-wrenching violence with a side-order of early death.”

IN: You signed up for it.

XH: Yeah, but I was sixteen and stupid and wasn’t going to let some girl tell me I couldn’t follow her into a dark hole filled with monsters to rescue my best friend just because she had superpowers and all I had was a flashlight. Xi was more than a little ambivalent about his whole cultural heritage, but they were his people and vampires weren’t ignorance or disease or crappy government policies. They were something he could fight. 

IN: Yes, I suppose they are. It must have been gratifying to find out that Xi was the type of man who would stand up to fight. 

XH: Yeah, it was, but at the same time I was [Pause] Remember how I said some Slayer-finding missions are nothing like eating pie? Well, at that point the assignment was feeling pretty un-pie; New Xade was a serious contender for the top ten most depressing places in the world, I was so far out of my element it wasn’t even funny and for all I knew I’d just staked the girl I’d been looking for.

IN: Oh. That seems rather, um [Pause] You didn’t tell Xi that did you?

XH: Not in those exact words. [Pause] Look, once you’ve been in the field you’ll see that everyone - I mean everyone, Watchers, Slayers, witches - has a moment where they feel like Betty Louise Plotnick from East Cupcake instead of the awesome demon fighter they are. We all go through it and anyone who tells you different is lying. When that moment hits, the best thing you can do is find someone to give a swift verbal kick in the pants to help you get over yourself.

IN: [Laughs] Is that what Xi did then?

XH: [Laughs] Oh, yeah. He gave me this look Giles would have been proud of and said “Xander, if this girl is the warrior woman you say, she would not be sitting in a resettlement camp. She would be out in there, in the bush, flouting the law and living like her ancestors did. If we are going to find your Slayer, we must go into the desert.”

IN: Into the desert?

XH: No, you’re saying it wrong. It was more into the desert. [Laughs] There we are, sitting on the hood of the car, watching the sun come up over the Kalahari and he’s intoning with dramatic pauses and gestures. We had to go, pause for effect -

IN: Into the desert.

XH: Yeah, just like that..


	3. Chapter 3

IN: So, did you just start driving?

XH: Ah, no. The Central Kalahari Game Reserve is bigger than some small countries and, you know, a desert. You don’t just drive into it, not unless you want to be a very dry corpse. You need supplies and maps and a plan. 

IN: So what was the plan?

XH: You know in Westerns when the posse goes and stakes out a watering hole?

IN: Yes. [Pause] Wait, that was your plan?

XH: Yeah, actually. It’s cliché for a reason. In the dry season, there are only so many places to get a drink so everyone shows up at a watering hole eventually. Of course, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve is practically the size of Denmark, so hitting the same one as our Slayer was sort of like finding the pub in London where you promised to meet your friend when the only part of the name you can remember is “the.”

IN: As plans go, that doesn’t seem especially, well, promising. 

XH: Still beats wandering aimlessly in the desert. 

IN: Touché. So, how did this staking out the watering hole work exactly?

XH: Well, Xi had this handy-dandy geological survey map with all the natural water sources and man-made wells. Once we gotten supplies, we picked one and headed out. We’d set up camp close enough to see what was going on and get water, but far enough where we wouldn’t get trampled by the herds of antelope or eaten by lions when they came to drink. Then we’d just wait for the people until it got boring and we moved to the next one. 

IN: You actually saw lions? Did they really try to eat you?

XH: [Laughs] Yes, we saw lions and no, there was no attempted eating. Compared to, say, a wildebeest, a human’s barely a snack and those ladies have a whole pride to feed. Aside from sunstroke, which, let me tell you, is a whole lot less fun than it sounds, the biggest danger was the people.

IN: The people? Wait, but I thought-

XH: Yeah, me too. We ran into our first group at our second watering hole, just drove up while they were sitting down to dinner. So, I hopped out of the car, started over to say hi and a second later, bullets are whizzing through the air and Xi and I are sprinting back to the jeep and doing that swan-dive over the hood thing that looks so cool in movies but hurts like hell in real life. 

IN: They shot at you? With guns?!

XH: Hunter-gatherers, remember? Old-school poison darts are just so last century, especially when you can just put a round in Pumbaa and dinner is served. So, anyway, there I am, really hoping the movies are right and car doors really can stop bullets and Xi’s shouting how no, we’re not from the government and we’re definitely not there to help. So, after, like, five minutes of yelling and gunplay, Xi managed to convince them that I was just some dumb anthropologist looking for stories about warrior women and under no circumstances were we going to get them arrested.

IN: Arrested?

XH: Hunting in the game reserve is illegal, remember? Everyone we ran into out there was pretty twitchy and trigger-happy, at least at first anyway. Once Xi finished explaining and everyone settled down, we always got a dinner invite. Everybody loves anthropologists. 

IN: It was like that every time? God Lord. That seems fairly [Pause]   
How did you put it? Un-pie?

XH: I guess, but it was a completely different type of un-pie than the un-pie of the resettlement camps. I mean, when you think about it, life in Sunnydale was the least pie-like existence in the history of ever, but it was like living in an action-slash-horror film. You had your monsters, your violence, your drama, your angst, your love, your [pause] your loss. Searching for the Slayer in the resettlement camps was like being in a really repetitive documentary. [Snorts] Now with smell-o-vison! I missed showers and a sense of accomplishment, my friends, a couple of really important season finales and hanging with people I didn’t have to constantly lie to. Being in the desert was like Indiana Jones without the Nazis. There were wild animals, gun fights, stunning vistas like something out of National Geographic and I even had me a fedora. Yeah, I still hadn’t had a shower and people kept shooting at me, but it was all so-

IN: Exhilarating?

XH: [Laugh] Well, I was gonna keep gushing about how it was all primal, like something out of a Slayer dream but exhilarating works. I figured out I was a massive adrenalin junky about the second week of summer vacation after sophomore year. After a few months of fighting vampires a trip to the water-slide park just wasn’t gonna cut it. 

IN: No, I suppose not. So, that was the plan? Visit every watering hole until you found the Slayer or got yourself shot, whichever came first?

XH: [Laughs] Of course not, Xi had to be back in Gabarone for school by the end of August. That only gave us a month and a half to visit watering holes and get shot at. Seriously though, we did have it sort of narrowed down. People with guns and no cars have to live within a few days walk from the nearest place to buy bullets. Plus, once we found the first group we just asked them where we could find other people. 

IN: Ah, I see. So, how long did it take you to find her?

XH: [Mumbles]

IN: I’m sorry. What was that?

XH: About a month and a half. 

IN: [Laughs]

XH: [Laughs] Hey, your Slayer is always in the last place you look for it. [Pause] We were on our way back to the city and we just ran into this group of, like, twenty people at a watering hole that had been deserted the last time we hit it. 

IN: So, how did it go? How did you know it was her?

XH: Well, there was the standard meet-and-greet; us hiding behind the car and shouting until the shooting stopped and we had our invite. Then we headed on over and there’s this girl.

IN: Ah, success. What was she like?

XH: She was fifteen back then and made Buffy look tall. Cocoa skin, heart-shaped face, one of those brightly-colored head-scarf thingies, really big gun and yeah, she definitely pinged my slay-dar.

IN: What was it that set off your, er, slay-dar, as it were?

XH: Well, she was totally hot in a completely-under-age-far-too-perilous-Castle-Anthrax sort of way. I mean, I’ve met hundreds of them and there are no ugly Slayers. It’s like part of the Slayer package; super strength, super speed, crazy prophetic dreams and smokin’ good looks.

IN: Yes, quite, very scientific. 

XH: I don’t know, there’s just something about the way Slayers move. They’re like a, a, a lioness; majestic and controlled and completely ready to pounce and rip your head off. 

IN: Um, Interesting choice of words. So, how did you choose to approach her? 

XH: I, ah, didn’t, actually. 

IN: What? Why not?

XH: Well, slay-dar aside, I wasn’t positive and chatting up a girl while surrounded by her heavily armed relatives is a really dumb idea. 

IN: Excellent point. What did you do instead?

XH: Had dinner. Bushmen have this whole thing about hospitality and gift exchange. They had some wild watermelon and a whole mess of grasshoppers, we had some jerky and canned goods so together we made a really interesting barbeque. So, after dinner, we got down to business.

IN: You talked to the girl?

XH: No, we told stories. I mean, I really wanted to, but I needed confirmation. I suppose I could have just thrown a knife at her head to see if she’d catch it but I figured that might set the wrong tone. So, I told Slayer stories instead, to see how she reacted.

IN: To see if she recognized them from Slayer dreams.

XH: Exactly. So, I tell the story of the First Slayer and I might as well have been reading the phone book for all she cared. Then I did a couple of Buffy stories, the thing with the Master and the whole Angel-Acuthla deal. Half the audience was in tears when she ran him through, even our girl, but there wasn’t any recognition. I was starting to think that maybe...

IN: Maybe she wasn’t the Sayer after all. [Pause] She was though, right? 

XH: Hey, a little respect for the narrative flow, please. Wait for the end and all will be revealed. So, um, where was I?

IN: You just told a number of stories to no effect. 

XH: Right, and then I told about the battle with the First and Willow’s spell. So, I explained about the Potentials and the First’s whole from beneath you it devours pan and she has this hey, where do I know that from look on her face and then...

IN: Then?

XH: Then I got to Buffy’s little pre-battle speech and she gasped, literally gasped and I knew.

IN: And that was when you approached her? Told her about her destiny?

XH: Aw, you make it sound all professional and Watcher-ly. And it could have been, ya know? I was gonna wait until morning and approach her in the least threatening way possible and have a little chat. I had this whole big Not-The-One-Girl speech planned out, but sadly, not to be.

IN: Why not? What happened?

XH: [Laughs] I ran into her coming back from the little Bush-men’s room in the middle of the night. She was just standing there with her arms crossed, glaring at me. 

IN: That doesn’t sound promising. 

XH: Well, when I got close enough she asked me why I was there, and it was pretty obvious taking a leak wasn’t gonna cover it. So I told her the truth, said she was a Slayer and that she deserved to know what that meant. And she gets this look on her face like I just bombed her little test. I didn’t know what she wanted. Heck, I’d gone all the way to Africa for this girl and I had no clue what to say. No clue about her.

IN: So, what did you do?

WH: I don’t know, I just did the talking thing. Asked her why she was there. 

IN: What did she say?

XH: She said she was fighting, fighting for her people’s home and their way of life. She was really, I don’t know, fierce about it. Sort of reminded me of Buffy back in the day when every fight was still personal instead of just the job. Not that Buffy isn’t, I mean, she’s still [Pause] You know, I’m gonna stop talking about Buffy, and get back to the story.

IN: Sounds like a plan. 

XH: [Laughs] More importantly, a good plan. So, anyway, I said that fighting for that stuff was great, but it wasn’t all resettlement camps and hunting restrictions. Then I told her about !Nai and how back at the camps, monsters were eating her people. Got, well, a little rant-y I guess. 

IN: How did she take it?

XH: [Snorts] Not well. You ever notice how many Slayers have really bad tempers? Well, she’s got one, big time, and this special little smile when she’s about to crack open a can of whoop-ass. Well, she smiled that smile, and then she asked me if I knew her name. You know what the kicker was?

IN: What?

XH: I didn’t. I’d been standing there lecturing her about her sacred duty and I didn’t even know her damn name. I mean, talk about quality Watcher-ing. I felt like the biggest dick on the planet, and not in the good, extra-large condoms sort of way. It was like getting sucker punched and she just kept smiling that scary-ass smile of hers and said her name was Xamseb. 

IN: What did you do?

XH: [Shrugs] What any normal person would do; introduced myself. Well, Xamseb sort of nodded like, yeah, that’s nice and asked me if I knew what her name meant.

IN: What does it mean?

XH: Lion, apparently. It suits her, you know? [Laughs] She is Slayer, hear her roar. [Pause] Then she asked me what my name meant.

IN: What does your name mean?

XH: Alexander? Protector of men. Well, I tell her that, and she laughs. Then she smiled at me, a real one this time, and said she liked me. And that, as they say, was that.

IN: That can’t be all there is. 

XH: Well, no. There was a lot more to it than that, but your tape’s almost out and we have to end somewhere, even if it’s the beginning.


End file.
